It may be too late to reconsider now, but by declining not to attend this year’s Pride parade the mayor has missed a golden opportunity to not only sooth his long running conflict with the gay community, but score huge political points.
Rob Ford won’t be attending this year’s Pride festivities because he’s got other commitments, namely at the family cottage in the Muskokas.
That’s a good one. But I’ll resist the temptation to call it a flat out lie – or call Ford a homophobe.
Let’s just sugarcoat this one for the next few paragraphs, instead, and call it a huge miscalculation on Ford’s part, one that he may end up regretting.
Imagine the scene: Ford and a few of his football buddies in floral boxers (no Ts) and water cannons running wild in a game of tag up and down Church Street. In one hot minute, all the bad feelings, the ignorant things he’s said about the gay community, the ignorant things he’s said about anything really, could be gone in a few squirts.
What a glorious photo op – Fordo all wet and gleaming, with huge toy squirter to boot for his guns and ammo supporters, on the front page of every paper in the country. He’d certainly put a crimp in the left’s impressions of him as an intolerant boob.
But the mayor has never shown himself to be man enough to be anything but uncompromising in his positions on any subject.
And on the gay thing there have always been questions about where his twisted musings on the subject of AIDS, for example, come from. Let’s just say it’s not a good place.
Ford’s decision, for the stream of criticism its sparked among the City Hall press corp, shouldn’t come as a surprise. There has always been the undertow of homophobia (the kind borne of ignorance more than spite maybe) in his pronouncements on things gay.
More importantly for the mayor, he knows he’s got a base to play to (many of them socially conservative immigrants) and the truth is many of them would be royally pissed if he decided to take part in the parade. Or have we forgotten that ad that came out of nowhere during the election? You remember the one on Sri Lankan radio about voting for Ford because George Smitherman is “married to a man”?
The subtle family values spin coming out of the mayor’s office to deflect criticism on this one is interesting. Canada Day at the cottage is a “tradition” for the Fords. The mayor just wants to be with his family. Hard to argue with that, right? The mayor’s mom was even brought into the fray to run interference for Robbie, showing up at a ribbon-cutting to defend her son’s decision. All that was missing was a doctor’s note.
Too easy to chalk this Pride slag up to Ford’s supposed Christian beliefs. It’s not like he goes to church on Sundays (although I’m still waiting on confirmation from the mayor’s office on that one).
Besides, if Julian Fantino, staunch Catholic trained by Jesuits could find time for this city’s gay community in the interests of good PR when he was top dick (and he was putting gays in jail), then certainly the current mayor can put aside his personal discomforts, whatever they may be. Is it the dudes in chaps that put him off?
By deciding not to attend this year’s parade, the mayor is reinforcing the stereotypical notion of Pride as nothing more than a queer fest for cruising homos. In that sense, the mayor is delegitimatizing an entire community, an influential and important one, whose members also have kids, mortgages and dreams and aspirations for their loved ones, just like the mayor. Shit, there may even be a gay fellow or two in Robbo’s own family.
Most bestowed with the honour of the mayor’s office or high position of influence rise to the occasion. More often than not they surprise their critics, understanding that their responsibility to lead is more important than their own narrow self-interests.
But the word magnanimous does not come easily off the tongue when considering Ford, still very much a man-child, dealing with whatever repressed feelings he may have from childhood.
In Ford’s case, adding the words His Worship to his name has just reinforced his own narrow sense of rightness. Those glorious words spoken to reporters a few weeks back – “I can say whatever I want, right?” – were seen as a joke by most, but they also speak volumes of Ford’s singular mindset.
The truth is Ford is the same small-minded fool from the burbs (I mean that in the court jester sense) he always was – his Pride decision is just another example – only now he wears better suits.
Indeed. There isn’t a day that goes by at City Hall when Ford’s hypocrisy, his flat out dislike (hatred) for those he considers his political enemies, isn’t on full display. (I’ll just mention those nurses on the province’s dime that he rejected this week for the city’s public health department for no other reason than out of political spite.)
His reason for cutting out on Pride, a least the one expressed publicly, doesn’t cut it. The mayor’s staunchest defender, Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy, who also happens to be gay, has offered as much.
The simple truth of this sorry episode, though, is more troubling. The mayor won’t be attending Pride because gays freak him out. And he’s just not man enough to get over that, or admit it.
